Does your doctor send prescriptions to pharmacy?

A question about : Does your doctor send prescriptions to pharmacy?

My doctors surgery has just started doing this.

It being the 21st Century, there was I thinking my prescription would be sent electronically to any pharmacy I chose.

Pah!

Apparently:
1) I can only use certain pharmacies who are linked with my surgery.
2) My surgery then contacts the pharmacy within a day or two
3) Within another day or two the pharmacist goes to my surgery to fetch prescription
4) I can finally go and collect it about a week later

...and this is supposed to be more convenient for the patient?
Am I not trusted with the prescription?
Is it to reduce fraud?
Is it because pharmacies don't seem to keep enough stocks these days & have to order medicines in?

Personally, I liked having the piece of paper I could take anywhere. I could change my plans and go to a different pharmacy if it was more convenient and I got my medication the same day.

If someone can explain why this system has come in, and that the timescale will improve, I'd be grateful.

Best answers:

• We have this but only for repeat prescriptions - sent in advance so the week wait is not relevant. Anything else we still get the paper. I can't imagine this working for antibiotics etc.
• A pharmacy has to be signed up to EPS for the surgery to be able to link to them. Only works for repeat drugs, so instead of having to go to gp surgery, ask for repeat script and then go to a pharmacy, you just go to your local one. People who benefit most will be those who have lots of repeats and the elderly.
• I thought this service was only for repeat and not acute prescriptions.... You should also be able to opt out and ask your surgery to leave your prescription for pick up or for another pharmacy of your choosing.
• Thanks arbroath lass, d0nkeyk0ng & Poppie68 - makes sense for repeat prescriptions as you describe. I still need to attend my surgery for an appointment though (I couldn't just put in an electronic rpt request), so I feel trapped between two systems. I'll just have to remember to order extra early.
  I might opt out next time, but she said I'd have to wait to get the prescription signed if I wanted it on paper &, at that time, I thought I'd successfully nominated the supermarket pharmacy I wanted to use. They rang me later to say I had to choose a different one
• At my surgery, the repeat prescriptions are picked up physically by pharmacy staff twice a day.
• Have had this system for about 10 years or more here but only for repeats.
  Works brilliantly for my husband who takes many different meds for his Parkinsons.We do nothing at all except answer the door to the lovely gent who drops the shipping order off at our home every 4 weeks.
  Occasionally get a note from the surgery asking him to make an appointment for a meds review - probably happens once a year.
• Theoretically yes they do, however there are often errors or hold ups. Some originate from surgery, some from pharmacy, who also manage and deliver my prescriptions.
  This week for example I needed something that one of my consultants has prescribed twice but not my surgery ( because its not been needed since!), it took a few days and phone calls and was a surgery issue, but my pharmacy eventually got it here. I'd have done a lot easier with it two days earlier, but it have survived.
  For urgent prescription requests its same day ( really urgent not just, had an appointment today, want it today) usually its a 48 hour situation for gp's to sign repeat prescriptions at my surgery. If the pharmacy manage it this is IME better coordinated, ( I dare to suggest individuals are delayed over the pharmacy connections ).
  In general I find it IS improving particularly if you let them manage a long term repeat prescription.
• I have a repeat prescription delivered to a local pharmacy- just round the corner not in the town centre, so very convenient.
  I was lucky recently, had a telephone consultation, and because
  it was a reoccurence of a previous condition the scrip was sent to the pharmacy electronically and I was able to pick it up within an hour. That is progress!
  Sadly however the likelihood of actually meeting a GP face to face is very low!! We have via the telephone to talk to the receptionist, to get a phone consultation and then, just maybe you get to see a nurse practitioner, or that rare species a Dr!! But I guess that situation is countrywide.
• I do this for repeat prescriptions (reminds me I need to go in and collect!) and it suits me fine. I tell the pharmacist what date I need the repeat by and it's sat there ready and waiting.
  I collect from my Tesco pharmacy which is great because they have long opening hours and I work a couple of hours from home/my GP.
• Both my husband and I have medications which we take daily. We are registered with a local pharmacy and they take care of it completely. I am on a monthly repeat and I have a little card which tells me when my meds are ready for collection. My DH is on two monthly but it is the same situation.
  We do nothing except go to pick up the items. In fact, they would deliver them but we are quite capable of going to fetch them, thank goodness.
• They asked me a few months ago in the pharmacy did i want to join up with this, a couple of times i dropped the repeat prescription into the doctors then they said in the Chemist i only need drop it in there and they'll look after it.
• I find this service really helpful- sadly the pharmacy I've been using for the past 10 years and where my prescriptions are all sent to is closing in a year but it tends to be really useful if I need an emergency prescription; say for example I call the 111 service and they prescribe me some medication (given on what I've taken in the past which isn't a repeat prescription) they then automatically send it through to a pharmacy and I can collect it with minimum wait because the time it takes me to get to the pharmacy even in a cab is enough for them to have everything prepared.
  I do need to still wait about 4 days for a repeat prescription to be prepared (I request it by the pharmacy who will then put in my request to the GP, then it's a 2 day wait for it to be written out and a further day or so for the pharmacy to have it ready- unless they have to order it).
  I find the pharmacy thing generally reliable, my pharmacy know my past repeat prescriptions so don't tend to always be out of stock and find the service far more useful especially in an emergency when the GP surgery is normally closed and to normally collect needed medication like that I'd either end up at A&E or if there is space left, waiting a long while to see the walk-in-duty-Doctor which is the last thing most people want to do when they are already feeling very unwell.
• We moved to a new area and didnt change GP instantly. Our old GP used EPS and as we tend to use Boots as our pharmacy they'd already got the system so we thought it'd all be ok but what we didnt know was that none of the local GPs had started using EPS. How wrong we were.
  Firstly, Boots claimed only 1 person had been trained on how to use it and so if he wasnt in the store they all looked confused and said to try again another time.
  Secondly, the first time they received an electronic prescription they printed it off and then said they couldnt dispense it because the GP hadnt signed it and refused to do so until the GP surgery faxed over the authorisation.
  Finally, they are just generally incompetent and dont "spot" the prescription coming in on the system and as most our meds are not normal "off the shelf" when we went in they'd get flustered and say to come back in 2-3 days as the prescription "just came in this morning" and we need to order the medications etc.
  Did get round to changing GP to a local one, they still dont use EPS and do the old fashioned way of coming in person to each surgery every day to drop off new requests and collect the prescriptions and things work much better now.
• My chemist does it electronically... but they still manage to get it wrong.
• I'm bl00dy annoyed.
  I joined this get your repeat prescriptions straight from the Chemist.
  I dropped a repeat prescrition into the chemist over a week ago now, i think it was the Wednesday. When i took it in i'd already run out of one of tablets i needed, but 'cos of that operation i had on my eye on 2nd Feb i haven't been able to get out of the house. Been the chemist this morning and there's nothing there, they had a record of me dropping it off but said i needed to phone the Doctor. Just come off the phone with them and she says there's nothing wrong at the their end, the Chemist should give it out. I asked ... 'you haven't got it sitting there have you'.......... Oh yes sorry.
  That's the second time now. The doctors about 3mls away. I passed that way during the week, if they'd only tell me i'll call instead of going on this automatic system, but they say it should be ok.
  Gggrrrr.
• I have been using this service with tesco for repeat prescriptions for the past few months. When I went last week though they said the rules had changed and I need to phone the doctor to request it, then phone tesco to let them know to collect it, then call again to see if it is ready or not. I've had problems trying to get through to tesco on the phone before though so I don't think that is going to work.
  I need to find out if that is just tesco it has changed for, or if it is all chemists round here, as I work it was very helpful not having to have time off to go pick up prescriptions, so I hope they aren't withdrawing the service all together.